RE: Re: Electrisave protocol / PC Interface

[Marcus Warrington <marcus.warrington@xxxxxxxxxx>]

..yes I've wondered about the fridge myself, it's a big American style
one =
by Whirlpool and I think the main controller board has a fault because
ther=
e's a constant clicking sound from the front panel relays and the
temperatu=
re display on the front is constantly flickering. I looked around on the
we=
b and it seems to be a common fault, but looks like it'll cost =A3200+ for
=
parts alone..

I only have one PC on 24x7 (the download machine ;)) and a Homevision box.
=
The PC is only a PII600 so I doubt its drawing a massive amount. I'm
planni=
ng on changing its harddrive over to a 2.5 laptop drive to try and shave a
=
few watts of it.

70W for the alarm panel sound massive.. that's about what our TV draws
when=
turned on!

One thing I did notice last time was that when I turned on the upstairs
lig=
hting circuit (but with all lights turned off) there was a power usage
meas=
ured by the electrisave. The only thing I can think of that is connected
to=
the lighting circuit are the LD11's... I'm guessing that these must draw s=
ome power to fuel the X10 monitoring circuits, but I would have thought it
=
would be milliamps.

One thing I might do soon is remove the Electrisave clamp (transmitter)
and=
then clamp it around the plug lead of various devices to see how much each=
is drawing. I have some plug-in units that do this but they are difficult =
to read when plugged in behind the TV or fridge.. the remote electrisave
mo=
nitor should make it much easier.

Marcus=20
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> Jon Payne
> Sent: 07 June 2007 09:17
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Re: Electrisave protocol / PC Interface
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> Our house idle's at 360W. 150W is the server, which I've now changed
to
> turn itself on/off overnight, 70W for the alarm's (!), I think the
fridge
> takes ~150W when it's on...
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> And yes, the display definitely does have a power socket.
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> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Marcus Warrington <marcus.warrington@xxxxxxx>
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Sent: Thursday, 7 June, 2007 8:46:05 AM
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Re: Electrisave protocol / PC Interface
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> Our house still seems to level out at 500watt !... i.e. even in the
> middle of the night its consuming half a kilowatt .. is this normal !!
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> Still haven't managed to get a handle on what's using this power, I've
> had all the consumer unit circuits off and then turned them on one at
a
> time, also powered off everything in the house and turned back on one
at
> a time but still not managed to pin it down. The 6 second poll time
> makes it difficult to get accurate measurements in this case,  as I
can
> switch something off ..wait.. get one reading.. switch it back on and
> get a completely different reading than before I switched it off (or
> maybe its fluctuations in voltage causing inaccurate power usage
> readings from the electrisave?). I'm thinking maybe I should switch
over
> to the RFXComm units..
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> I thought the display panel *DID* have a power socket (9v) i.e. can be
> run off the mains. It's the sensor (transmitter) that is purely
battery
> powered.
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> Marcus
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> ________________________________
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> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of domdevitto
> Sent: 06 June 2007 19:21
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] Re: Electrisave protocol / PC Interface
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> > Regarding the Electrisave, the problem I have with it is range..
> there are certain times of day and/or positions in the house where it
> just looses signal.. even with fresh batteries. The other issue is
> that the fastest poll time is 6 seconds (I think) which seems like an
> eternity when you just switched off an appliance or light and are
> waiting too what effect it has had. Also sometimes something else ,
> like the fridge, may come on in-between which then gives you a false
> comparative reading..
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> Agreed, but a proper meter would need to show:
> average, min, max, and median
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> In practice, you only go around your house turning stuff off/on when
> you first get it - then you can, from the display know when an unusual
> amount of leccy is being used... Kids! Are your TVs on! You're meant
> to be asleep!
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> One thing the Electrisave could do with is a transformer - the big LCD
> on the receiver mean the batteries go after 5 months. Of course,
> maybe this would be counter productive :-)
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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